A policeman loomed into view. “Get back! Fucking get back!” he screamed, clad entirely in body armour. He swung a baton at Het, who was wearing only a t-shirt, blue jeans and his ‘Save the Pits’ badge.
Now Het thought himself a brave man. His mother had told him he was brave plenty of times, especially when she found out about Dad and the other woman, when Het took her to one side and told her what she needed to hear: her sons loved her, she was important, strong and kind, all the things old Alec had forgotten. But here was a beating and who wouldn’t be afraid of that?
He ran, hearing the officer’s jeers. He could hardly take exception to them, because what kind of a leader runs? A craven one, that’s who. A big man who’d never had his way and was scared of what he’d do if he ever got it.
Shell.
Het made it to the hill. Some lads had broken a wall apart and were using the debris as missiles. Rocks and stones soared overhead, chunks of mortar and nasty bits of car and windscreen, all other kinds of rubbish. Het spun round and headed back towards the melee, where it felt safer, in time to see a policeman take the full force of something to the brow. The socket above the man’s eye was badly caved, blood leaking like a paint splash down his face.
“You all right, lad? You all right?” Het said, skidding to his knees beside the wounded officer. No one liked to see a thing like that. But another officer arrived and smashed Het on the elbow with his baton.
“Leave off him, cunt.”
Het clutched at the pain and watched the wounded policeman being dragged away. He and the injured man gazed at one another, nothing really to be said.
Projectiles. A police charge. Now, as the picketers’ defeat seemed likely, Het spotted his brother, Arthur, reaching out and stealing a policeman’s helmet off his head.
And Het laughed because it was Arthur, Arthur through and through, and Arthur was laughing too, only the policeman didn’t find it funny. He struck Het’s brother savagely in the face. “Have that then.” Then he snatched the helmet from the ground as Arthur was sent spiralling back into the crowd.
Het had almost reached his brother when something stopped him. How would Arthur react? Retreat and save himself, as Het had just done? Or something else entirely?
As if he needed to ask. Arthur re-appeared, staggering wildly in the direction of his assailant. Het was there in seconds, and having been halted, Arthur lost the will to fight, he and Het propping each other up, Het jealous of Arthur’s strength, his brother’s will to act when he had practically wet himself. It was then that he saw the difference between them, the push and pull of each personality. And what would their father have said, had he been here to witness this? What would Sam say, come to think of it, after all the ugly things Het had called him? He’d been no good that day, full of fear, all his life standing because he was scared to be seen sitting down. Great gusts of shame filled his lungs. “Get off,” he said to Arthur, unable to bear the comparisons orbiting in his mind. “Let go.” But he was the one doing the holding and his brother’s face was a mess.
“Knuckle duster,” Arthur said, leaning against Het and bleeding against his shoulder.
“Worst it’s been. I’m telling you that’s worst I’ve seen it.”
Het was down the welfare. A few others who’d been at Tyndale were also present, but mostly the room, decorated by banners from beams and lodge icons and portraits hanging on the walls, was dead quiet.
Het paid for his drinks and returned to where Shell was waiting, her hair tied back, wearing that sideways expression that always made her seem like she was remembering something from long ago.
The ale was warm and sweet and Het was happy when he was with Shell. He described again how Arthur had been injured. It was a southern policeman that had done it: a man in a white shirt rather than a blue, so it must have been one of the draft from the London Met or Thames Valley forces, heavyweights on extra brass, out of their usual jurisdictions.
It was policemen like this who made comments when they pulled you over, who turfed you out onto the road, roughed you up and called you darling. Het had recently been told by one of these officers that the miners deserved what was happening to them. You and the rest of the fucking scrubbers, his face pushed into the jagged gravel of the hard shoulder. There was an Alsatian, the animal’s fur collecting drizzle pearls as it barked heat into the miners’ faces from no more than an inch away. The daffodils were in bloom by the roadside, your scar stretching as you tried to escape clasping jaws. “That strawberry ice cream?” one of the policemen said to Het, jabbing his scar with a nail-bit finger. “Fuck off back to Rotherham.”
“Well, where’s he now?” said Shell, “You must have some idea.” She sipped her drink.
“You tell me.”
“Well I would only he came back in one of them Phantom of the Opera type things. Fuming, he were, while I fetched ointment and sponge. When I came down he’d hopped it.”
“Hospital sorted all that,” said Het.
“But I’m his wife.”
Shell might be Arthur’s wife but it wasn’t as if she was out searching for him. Back from her new job at the bakery, acting concerned with a drink. She reminded Het of his mother in that she always behaved how was expected, never mind that she probably didn’t mean a word of what came out of her mouth. Another chance and another, one more, always terrified of the alternative, the Litten Path. He watched Shell’s lips and wondered what they would taste like.
“He’ll turn up. Still if you’re worried we could ask around,” Het said.
“Give over. I’m not having folk think I can’t look after my own husband.”
Janice Scanlan approached their table, asking where the latest food donations were to go. Shell would never admit to being the one in charge, but the other women looked up to her and it was obvious she enjoyed the responsibility. She directed Jan to a table at the back where food tins and welfare packages were steadily accumulating. Channelled regionally by the union, the donation and care parcels were flooding in from the locality and elsewhere: the public, via international aid and other unions, other governments and overseas pits. The comrades in Russia had been especially kind. Although it might feel like it sometimes, the striking miners were not alone.
It was Shell who’d started Litten’s soup kitchen. Over the last few weeks she’d also helped design placards, come on marches and when the police charged the pickets, blown her whistle and chanted with the best of them. She packed the snap, made it, too. She poured the coffee, listened to people’s problems and helped them mend their clothes. Het was proud to say Shell was as much a part of this struggle as any man, and if you asked her about those who snuck like rats into work around the back of the pits, those who were bold enough to argue it out with the picketers out front or even fight their way through the crowds, never mind those who wormed their way in, entreating those brave enough to come on strike, insisting that they were only thinking of their families, Shell knew the name for them.
Het wondered what she’d think if she knew Arthur didn’t want to help the effort: that he might have scabbed if he could. Het was tempted to tell her, wanted her to know what kind of a man her husband was, only she must know, more than anyone she must know. Arthur Newman, gap toothed and magnetic. Wind him up and let him go. Offer him a pill and he’ll take two of them.
Equally Shell knew about Het’s father as few outside of the family ever did. She was young when she first met the Newmans. Het remembered her introduction, having to spend most of the night trying to keep cool whenever she glanced his way, cracking his finger joints under the table and kicking himself for missing that night at The Masons, letting Arthur get there first. He could hardly bear to look at Shell and had to resort to showing her what he was about by seeing to it that she got the best slice of beef. In his eagerness he knocked the gravy boat onto the carpet.